Confronting Colonial Objects:

Histories, Legalities, and Access to

Culture Carsten Stahn
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/confronting-colonial-objects-histories-legalities-and-a
ccess-to-culture-carsten-stahn/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Planned Violence: Post/Colonial Urban Infrastructure,

Literature and Culture 1st ed. Edition Elleke Boehmer

https://ebookmass.com/product/planned-violence-post-colonial-
urban-infrastructure-literature-and-culture-1st-ed-edition-
elleke-boehmer/

Criminal Legalities and Minorities in the Global South

George B. Radics

https://ebookmass.com/product/criminal-legalities-and-minorities-
in-the-global-south-george-b-radics/

Java how to program. Early objects Eleventh Edition

Deitel

https://ebookmass.com/product/java-how-to-program-early-objects-
eleventh-edition-deitel/

Colonial Terror: Torture and State Violence in Colonial

India Deana Heath

https://ebookmass.com/product/colonial-terror-torture-and-state-
violence-in-colonial-india-deana-heath/
Emotions and Modernity in Colonial India : From Balance
to Fervor Margrit Pernau

https://ebookmass.com/product/emotions-and-modernity-in-colonial-
india-from-balance-to-fervor-margrit-pernau/

Thin Objects Øystein Linnebo

https://ebookmass.com/product/thin-objects-oystein-linnebo/

Access to Power: Electricity and the Infrastructural

State in Pakistan Ijlal Naqvi

https://ebookmass.com/product/access-to-power-electricity-and-
the-infrastructural-state-in-pakistan-ijlal-naqvi/

Equity and Access to High Skills through Higher

Vocational Education Elizabeth Knight

https://ebookmass.com/product/equity-and-access-to-high-skills-
through-higher-vocational-education-elizabeth-knight/

Beginning Java Objects: From Concepts to Code, 3rd

edition Jacquie Barker

https://ebookmass.com/product/beginning-java-objects-from-
concepts-to-code-3rd-edition-jacquie-barker/
 C U LT U R A L H E R I TAG E L AW A N D P O L IC Y

Series Editors
PROF ES S OR F R ANCES C O FR ANC ION I
Professor of International Law and Human Rights and Co-​Director of the
Academy of Academic Law at the European University Institute, Florence

PROF ES S OR ANA F I LI PA V RD OLJAK

Associate Dean (Research) and Professor of Law at the University
of Technology, Sydney

Confronting Colonial Objects

C U LT U R A L H E R I TAG E L AW A N D P O L IC Y
The aim of this series is to publish significant and original research on and
scholarly analysis of all aspects of cultural heritage law through the lens
of international law, private international law, and comparative law. The
series is wide in scope, traversing disciplines, regions, and viewpoints.
Topics given particular prominence are those which, while of interest to
academic lawyers, have significant bearing on policy-​making and current
public discourse on the interaction between art, heritage, and the law.

advisory board
James Nafziger
Kurt Siehr
Ben Boer
Roger O’Keefe
Marc-​André Renold
Federico Lenzerini
Keun-​Gwan Lee
 Confronting Colonial
Objects
Histories, Legalities, and Access to Culture

C A R S T E N S TA H N
 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Carsten Stahn 2023
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2023
Some rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, for commercial purposes,
without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly
permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate
reprographics rights organization.

This is an open access publication, available online and distributed under the terms of a
Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial – No Derivatives 4.0
International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), a copy of which is available at
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of this licence
should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above
Public sector information reproduced under Open Government Licence v3.0
(http://​www.natio​nala​rchi​ves.gov.uk/​doc/​open-​gov​ernm​ent-​lice​nce/​open-​gov​ernm​ent-​lice​nce.htm)
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023943279
ISBN 978–​0–​19–​286812–​1
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780192868121.001.0001
Printed and bound in the UK by
TJ Books Limited
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
 Preface and Acknowledgements

The taking and return of cultural artefacts is one of the most discussed topics in the
art world and international relations. It is present wherever we go, often on our own
doorsteps. Many Western museums are major tourist attractions. They host many
objects or human remains, whose colonial histories or ‘ghostly presences’ pose in-
triguing questions in relation to the past and present or raise painful memories in
the eyes of those affected. How should we confront these challenges? These ques-
tions are not only at the heart of expert discussions or curatorial policies but go to
the core of societal identities. The ethics, institutional practices, and public percep-
tions surrounding contested objects are shifting. The significance of the moment is
captured by the striking words of Bénédicte Savoy on the occasion of the historic
French return of twenty-​six objects from Dahomey to modern-​day Benin: ‘Just as
there was a before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there will be a before and
after the return to Benin of the works looted by the French army in 1892.’1 These re-
turns are the tip of the iceberg of a movement which has gained new traction after
many decades of struggle, silence, or delay.
Coloniality was mediated through material things. The life story and transform-
ation of objects provide ample evidence that cultural objects were not only sites
of colonial violence, domination, or commodification but also symbols of resist-
ance or agents in their own right, which transformed attitudes in Western soci-
eties. Human remains became the incarnation of the body politics of colonialism.
Although the debate on restitution and return of stolen or looted cultural objects is
as old as humanity, cultural takings in the colonial era have received limited struc-
tural attention. Colonial violence has remained in the shadow of the holocaust.
Amadou-​Mahtar M’Bow, former Director-​General of UNESCO, recalled in 1978
that the return of cultural assets to communities of origin ‘cannot be solved simply
by negotiated agreements and spontaneous acts’.2 However, in the process of UN
decolonization, the link between history, identity, and access to culture was mar-
ginalized, despite calls for restitution. For a long time, return was treated as an issue
of cultural diplomacy. Change was mainly driven by developments of indigenous
rights and the gradual humanization of cultural heritage law.
Over the past decade, the restitution movement has reached a tipping point. We
witness a growing consciousness of the ongoing remnants of colonial injustice,

1 Farah Nayeri and Norimitsu Onishi, ‘Looted Treasures Begin a Long Journey Home from France’

New York Times (28 October 2021).

2 Amadou-​Mahtar M’Bow, ‘A Plea for the Return of an Irreplaceable Cultural Heritage to Those Who

Created It’ (Paris: UNESCO, 1978).

vi Preface and Acknowledgements

changing museum ethics, and professional practices, as well as new ways to con-
front issues of ownership or access to culture. Sustainable Development Goal 16
lists ‘recovery and return of stolen assets’ as an express target. Change is driven by
civil society pressure, return claims, professional networks, curators or individual
institutions, greater transparency, the establishment of new art institutions in the
Global South—​often more modern than their Western counterparts, new forms of
collaboration between museums and communities in provenance research, gov-
ernance or display, and new prospects of sharing objects. They provide the building
blocks for a new era of engagement.
This book seeks to take stock of these developments and to contribute to the
emerging strand of literature on cultural colonial takings and their contemporary
significance. One challenge is positionality. Should this be done by a Western au-
thor if there is already a diversity gap in contemporary academic publishing? On the
one hand, this is an ethical dilemma which must be openly acknowledged. There is
a pressing need to diversify scholarship, foreground local knowledge systems, and/​
or strengthen the voices of those who have advocated for change, but have received
less attention in discourse. On the other hand, it is important to stimulate crit-
ical inquiry and memory in Western societies who struggle to re-​engage with their
own past. As Chimamanda Adichie said at the opening of the Humboldt Forum in
Berlin: ‘We cannot change the past but we can change our blindness to the past’.3
The study seeks to heed the call by Open Restitution Africa to ensure more inclu-
sive referencing and engagement with non-​Western voices and perspectives.4
The work addresses colonial objects in the broad sense, i.e. colonized cultural
objects and bodies. It starts from the premise that the underlying challenges can
only be addressed through the interplay of different lenses: justice, ethics, and
human rights. It illustrates how colonial agents reinvented social and scientific
narratives to justify takings throughout different periods of colonial history and
shows synergies with contemporary arguments advanced in the discourse on res-
titution and return, including the re-​construction of identities through restitution
processes. It explains the dual role of law, as imperial tool and language, and as
instrument of resistance and transformation. It points out blind spots in cultural
heritage law and new ways to deal with colonial heritage, drawing on collabora-
tive practices, experiences with successful returns, and synergies with transitional
justice concepts. It proposes a relational cultural justice approach to overcome im-
passes, which have created stalemate and impeded dialectical engagement. It does
not portray restitution or return as golden standard for all objects. It rather places

3 Humboldt Forum, Keynote speech by Chimamanda Adichie (22 September 2021) https://​www.

humbol​dtfo​rum.org/​en/​progr​amm/​digita​les-​ange​bot/​digi​tal-​en/​keyn​ote-​spre​ech-​by-​chi​mama​nda-​
adic​hie-​32892/​.
4 Molemo Moiloa, Reclaiming Restitution: Centering and Contextualizing the African Narrative

(Open Restitution Africa, 2022) https://​open​rest​itut​ion.afr​ica/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2022/​09/​ANF-​Rep​

ort-​Main-​Rep​ort.pdf.
 Preface and Acknowledgements vii

the emphasis on the need to search forms of consent in relation to ownership, pres-
entation, or conservation, based on the nature of objects, structural injustice, and
contemporary relations. The core idea of the relational model is to foster new col-
laborative relationships between holding institutions, countries, or communities
of origin and local stakeholders. It argues at the same time that contemporary en-
gagement should not be reduced to issues of return, but identifies strategies and
remedies beyond restitution.
A key part of the manuscript is devoted to micro-​histories, biographies, or
‘necrographies’ of objects. They often speak for themselves. They illustrate the
narratives of takings, unexpected twists and turns in the lives of objects, different
ontologies, and forms of encounter. These stories do not only offer fascinating in-
sights about colonial politics, world history, or the branding of art forms, but also
offer new ways to understand the ways in which racial science and market forces
influenced the shaping of international law.
The study challenges the argument that all takings of cultural objects qualify as
looted art or theft. But it also questions the premise that colonial acquisitions were
lawful, simply because they involved some type of consent, exchange, or compen-
sation. It relies on the concept of entanglement to recognize these complexities.
It argues that legality should be regarded as a spectrum, with different degrees of
legality or illegality (‘entangled legalities’), and develops principles of relational
justice to disentangle these dichotomies. It illustrates some of the risks and blind
spots of current return practices, such as the dominant focus on spectacular ob-
jects or continuing double standards in relation to natural history objects.
Major parts of the text were written during the Covid-​19 pandemic. They are
not only inspired by interdisciplinary scholarly perspectives, but by many virtual
seminars, podcasts (e.g. ‘Stuff the British Stole’), and news platforms, such as the
invaluable ‘Restitution Matters’ project, open access sources (e.g. Kwame Opoku’s
entries on Modern Ghana), and actual and virtual conversations with friends and
colleagues. It takes into account developments until March 2023.
I wish to thank Ingrid Samset from Leiden University College for her careful
reading and invaluable comments and Charlotte Perez for her critical editorial
reading. I also wish to express my gratitude to colleagues from the Leiden Cultural
Heritage Centre (Pieter ter Keurs, Evelien Campfens), the Grotius Centre for
International Legal Studies, and Queen’s University Belfast, and our students for
inspiring discussions and exchange of ideas. Particular thanks are also owed to
Francesco Francioni and Ana Filipa Vrdoljak for including this work in the Series
on Cultural Heritage Law and Policy, to Nicola Prior for her careful copy-​editing,
and to colleagues at OUP (Merel Alstein, Robert Cavooris, and Lane Berger) for
making this book a reality.
The work is made available open access in order to enable broad engagement by
readers and audiences in all parts of the globe. It is not only geared towards experts,
but is meant to encourage discussion on the responsibilities and moral choices we
viii Preface and Acknowledgements

face in our daily actions when we encounter contested objects. I hope it will not be
the end or the beginning of the end, but rather the end of the beginning of a more
open, equal, and transparent discourse on ways to confront entangled objects, and
a means to translate new visions into action. It is dedicated to my mother, who ex-
plored the fascination of different heritage traditions in her travels and exposed me
to new worlds.
The Hague, March 2023
 Preface to Carsten Stahn’s book

Confronting Colonial Objects: Histories, Legalities,

and Access to Culture

This book is a timely and important contribution to the current debate on the im-
pact of colonialism and of de-​colonization on the legal status of cultural property
and on the difficult issue of reparation and restitution of objects obtained by war,
colonialism, and coercion from colonized peoples. In the past twenty years this
theme has attracted vast and increasing attention on the part of scholars, museums,
media, collectors, and experts in provenance research. Important museums of the
world have been facing increasing scrutiny from media, academics, and law en-
forcement officials over the extent to which their collection may include cultural
objects looted during the colonial period. This has produced unprecedented reac-
tions at the political level—​such as the commitment undertaken in 2017 in a public
speech by the French President Macron to inaugurate a policy of gradual return to
African countries of cultural objects removed during the colonial period and now
part of the collections of national museums. As we know, this political pronounce-
ment has been followed by the influential Rapport Savoy/​Sar sur la restitution du
patrimoine africaine. This move has been followed by the adoption by important
museums in Europe and the United States of plans intended to root out looted arte-
facts in their collections.
In this climate of changing cultural mores, this book addresses the topic through
the lens of three interrelated legal-​theoretical contexts: justice, ethics, and human
rights. In this multidisciplinary perspective, the author raises the important ques-
tion of whether the Western legal and social construct that defines the concept of
cultural property and its relation to society may be shared, or may even be compat-
ible, with the cultural understandings and legal traditions of the colonized people.
The answer is, obviously, a negative one. Hence also a negative evaluation of the
role played by international law in legitimizing the mass appropriation of cultural
objects by the colonizing powers. But the most important question that remains to
be answered concerns the role that international law can play today in remedying
past injustices and ensuring the return of cultural objects wrongly removed from
colonial territories. Today, international law provides a framework of multilat-
eral instruments designed to facilitate the restitution or return of cultural objects
illegally removed from their country of origin. However, as we well know, these
instruments—​such as the 1970 UNESCO Convention and the 1995 UNIDROIT
Convention—​are not technically capable of addressing the restitution of colonial
x Preface to Carsten Stahn’s book

loot because they have no retroactive effect. However, this formal legal obstacle to
the application of the above instruments to colonial loot does not relieve us from
the duty to remedy past cultural injustices that continue to display their harmful
effects in present time. This is what the author of this book successfully attempts to
do through the lens of justice, ethics, and human rights.
Francesco Francioni and Ana Filipa Vrdoljak
 Contents

Table of Cases  xix

Table of Instruments  xxiii
List of Abbreviations  xxxv

1. C
 onfronting Colonial Heritage: Introducing Entanglements,
Continuities, and Transformations 1
2. E
 xpanding Empire: Curiosity, Power, and Prestige 61
3. C
 ollecting Mania, Racial Science, and Cultural Conversion
through Forcible Expeditions 120
4. T
 he Scramble for Cultural Colonial Objects: Other Types
of Acquisition 182
5. C
 ollecting Humanity: Commodification, Trophy Hunting, and
Bio-​colonialism  237
6. L
 aw’s Complicity in Cultural Takings and Colonial Violence:
Double Standards, Discursive Silencing, and Social Transformation  286
7. C
 olonial and Post-​colonial Continuities in Culture Heritage
Protection: Narratives and Counter-​narratives 345
8. A
 cknowledging the Past, Righting the Future: Changing Ethical
and Legal Frames 414
9. B
 eyond to Return or Not to Return: Towards Relational
Cultural Justice 478

Index 537
 Table of Contents

Table of Cases  xix

Table of Instruments  xxiii
List of Abbreviations  xxxv

1. Confronting Colonial Heritage: Introducing Entanglements,

Continuities, and Transformations  1
1 Setting the scene  1
1.1 Tipu’s story  2
1.2 Premise, positionality, and methodology  5
2 Tensions between empire, cultural dispossession, and protection of
cultural objects  16
2.1 Ancient roots of the civilizatory paradox  16
2.2 Reincarnations in just war doctrine and scholastic scholarship  19
2.3 Renaissance and Enlightenment  20
2.4 Conflicting tensions in the nineteenth century  26
3 Current manifestations  30
4 New horizons  37
4.1 Agents of resistance, agents of Empire  38
4.2 Perpetual reinvention of coloniality and racial capitalism  40
4.3 Complicity of collectors, museums, and racial science  43
4.4 A cycle of distancing, discursive silencing, and erasure  45
4.5 Entangled objects  46
4.6 Dual role of law  48
4.7 Interplay of justice, ethics, and human rights  51
4.8 Museums as transitional justice spaces  53
4.9 Relational cultural justice as a bridge to break impasses in
restitution discourse  56
4.10 Temple versus agora: Changing museum structures,
interconnectivity, and object mobility  58
2. Expanding Empire: Curiosity, Power, and Prestige  61
1 Introduction  61
1.1 The violence of takings  64
1.2 Justificatory discourses  65
1.3 Forms of acquisition  68
1.4 Changing contexts  74
2 Methods of collection from the sixteenth to the mid-​eighteenth
centuries  75
2.1 Spanish conquest of Central and South America  75
xiv Table of Contents

2.2 Corporate colonialism  77

2.3 Missionary ‘collecting’ and traders and explorers  86
2.4 Gifts  87
3 The systematization of collection between the eighteenth and
the mid-​nineteenth centuries  87
3.1 Imperial collecting between cultural nationalism and
cultural elevation  88
3.2 The quest for prestige and trophy: Objects acquired through
military operations and occupation  91
3.3 Imperial collecting to care and preserve: Semi-​public, semi-​private
acquisition in the service of exploration and civilization  101
3.4 Gifts  115
4 Conclusions  117
3. Collecting Mania, Racial Science, and Cultural Conversion
through Forcible Expeditions  120
1 Introduction  120
2 The ambivalent use of science  122
3 The new age of ethnological museums and collections  126
4 Sociological transformation  133
5 Acquisition through forcible expeditions: Selected micro-​histories  135
5.1 Looting of the Yuanmingyuan Palace (1860)  137
5.2 French punitive expedition to Korea (1866)  142
5.3 The Abyssinian Expedition of 1868 (Maqdala Pillage)  144
5.4 Punitive expeditions to Kumasi during the Anglo-​Asante Wars
(1974, 1896, 1900)  147
5.5 The canoe prow ornament (tangué) of Lock Priso (1884)  153
5.6 French expedition to Dahomey (1892)  156
5.7 The Lombok expeditions (1894)  158
5.8 The acquisition of the male Luba mask during the Belgian Force
Publique expedition to Lulu (1896)  161
5.9 The taking of the Benin bronzes: A hallmark of colonial looting
(1897)  163
5.10 Removal of the Kono boli figure: Looting during the
Dakar–​Djibouti mission (1931)  173
5.11 Concluding reflections  178
4. The Scramble for Cultural Colonial Objects: Other Types of
Acquisition  182
1 Introduction  182
2 The taking of the Tūranga Meeting House
(Te Hau ki Tūranga) (1867)  184
3 Removal of the Easter Island Moai Hoa Hakananai by the HMS
Topaze (1868)  186
 Table of Contents xv

4 Forced migration: The history of the Great Zimbabwe

Birds (1889–​1891)  190
4.1 Removal through colonial collecting  191
4.2 Colonial prejudice and misinterpretation  193
4.3 Symbols of new national identity  195
5 Acquisition in the shadow of violence: The Bangwa Queen
(1899) and Ngonnso, ‘Mother of the Nso’ (1902)  196
5.1 The Bangwa Queen  197
5.2 Ngonnso, ‘Mother of the Nso’  203
6 The grand canoe from Luf, German New Guinea: Acquisition
after destruction (1882/​1903)  205
6.1 Context  205
6.2 The 1882 punitive expedition and its consequences  207
6.3 Acquisition by Max Thiel in 1903  209
7 Converted objects: The power figures (Mikinsi) collected by Father
Leo Bittremieux at the Scheut Mission as of 1907  210
8 Entangled gift: Mandu yenu, throne of King Njoya (1908)  213
9 The ‘sale’ and return of the Olokun head from Ife (1910)  215
10 German Elginism: The Bust of Nefertiti (1913)  217
10.1 Context  219
10.2 The partage: legal or moral wrong?  220
10.3 Unjust enrichment?  223
10.4 Cultural reinterpretation  225
11 Removals under occupation or colonial domination: Venus of
Cyrene (1913–​1915) and Aksum Obelisk (1936)  227
11.1 Venus of Cyrene (1913–​1915)  227
11.2 The Aksum stele  230
12 Conclusions  234
5. Collecting Humanity: Commodification, Trophy Hunting,
and Bio-​colonialism  237
1 Introduction  237
2 Colonial systems of collection  240
3 Human remains as trade items  242
4 Human remains as trophies of war  244
4.1 Practices of trophy hunting and mutilation  245
4.2 The story of the Mkwawa head  253
5 Systematized collecting for science in a colonial context  261
5.1 Settler colonial contexts  263
5.2 The story of Sarah Baartman (‘The Black Venus’)  268
5.3 Commodification in British/​Irish relations: The body politics
of Charles Byrne, ‘the Irish Giant’  271
5.4 Science as accomplice to genocide: the hunt for skulls and remains
in German South West Africa  272
5.5 Bio-​colonialism and the collection of fossil remains  278
6 Conclusions  281
xvi Table of Contents

6. Law’s Complicity in Cultural Takings and Colonial Violence:

Double Standards, Discursive Silencing, and Social Transformation  286
1 Introduction  286
2 Empire’s tools: Double standards in the recognition of legal personality  288
2.1 Contradictions in colonial practices  289
2.2 Counter-​narratives  291
3 Justification and contestation of hybrid legal forms and corporate
structures  294
4 The legitimation of colonial violence  300
4.1 Specificities of colonial warfare  301
4.2 Double standards and racial bias in the laws of war  304
4.3 The silencing of violence in the legitimization of the use of force  316
4.4 Counter-​narratives  318
5 Colonial law: The making and unmaking of colonial identities  324
5.1 Roles of colonial law  325
5.2 Cultural transformation, alienation, or destruction  326
6 Entangled legalities  337
6.1 Multi-​normative frames of reference  337
6.2 Contextualized assessment of circumstances of acquisition  340
6.3 Legalities as a spectrum involving law and ethics  343
7. Colonial and Post-​colonial Continuities in Culture Heritage
Protection: Narratives and Counter-​narratives  345
1 Introduction  345
2 Silences and continuities in the inter-​war period  349
2.1 Double standards under mandate administration  350
2.2 Codification efforts  352
3 Post-​Second World War codifications  353
4 UN decolonization: Law as a fortress  357
4.1 The battle over retroactivity of the 1970 Convention  362
4.2 The UN General Assembly as vehicle for restitution  365
4.3 The UNESCO Intergovernmental committee as political back-​up  366
4.4 Gaps and silences in the 1983 treaty regime on state succession  370
5 Advances and divides of the UNIDROIT Convention  374
5.1 Concerns of market countries  375
5.2 Innovations and drawbacks  375
5.3 Continuing divides  377
6 The Emperor’s new clothes  378
6.1 Conception of cultural objects  380
6.2 The diversification of cultural heritage law  388
6.3 The turn to indigenous rights  392
7 Conclusions  410
8. Acknowledging the Past, Righting the Future: Changing
Ethical and Legal Frames  414
1 Introduction  414
 Table of Contents xvii

2 Transformation of ethics  419

2.1 Divergent approaches  420
2.2 The turn to relational ethics  428
2.3 Formalizing ethics: The turn to national guidelines and policies,
including common principles  439
3 Legal avenues: Three models of responsibility  456
3.1 Interactional justice: Remedying wrong  459
3.2 Structural injustice: Responsibility grounded in the contemporary
relationship to wrong  463
3.3 Relational justice: Human rights-​based approaches towards
cultural heritage  465
3.4 Intersectionality  466
4 Revisiting narratives and semantics  467
4.1 Classifications  468
4.2 Narratives and labels  470
5 Conclusions  472
9. Beyond to Return or Not to Return: Towards Relational
Cultural Justice  478
1 Introduction  478
2 Some object lessons  481
2.1 Dahomey returns  483
2.2 The movement towards return of Benin bronzes  487
3 New approaches towards consent  489
3.1 Ethical and legal foundations  490
3.2 Relevance of justice considerations and the significance and
value of objects  493
4 A spectrum of possibilities  495
4.1 Mutually beneficial return agreements  495
4.2 Shared stewardship models  497
4.3 Loans, reverse loans, or use of replica  497
4.4 New forms of circulation and object mobility  499
4.5 Digital restitution and use of non-​fungible tokens (NFTs)  501
4.6 Facets of epistemic restitution  504
5 Relational procedures  507
6 Beyond return: Relation-​building and new object possibilities  511
7 Beyond the status quo: Rethinking normative structures  513
7.1 Reviewing domestic barriers  514
7.2 Filling normative gaps  518
7.3 Scrutinizing private transactions  521
7.4 Relational cultural justice principles regarding entangled objects  524
8 Not a conclusion  535

Index  537
 Table of Cases

NATIONAL CASES

Australia
High Court of Australia, Mabo and Others v Queensland (No. 2) [1992] HCA 23;
(1992) 175 CLR 1����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������293n.63, 293n.65

Canada
Federal Court (Canada) Hamlet of Baker Lake v Minister of Indian Affairs
and Northern Development, (1979) 107 DLR (3d), 513���������������������������������288–​89n.21
Supreme Court, R. v Marshall; R. v Bernard, [2005] 2 S.C.R. 220, 2005 SCC 43������� 319n.245

Colombia
Republic of Colombia, Constitutional Court, Judgment SU-​649/​17,
19 October 2017������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 117n.328

France
High Court of Paris, Survival International V. Nret-​Minet, Tessier & Sarrou,
RG No.: 13/​52880, 12 April 2013, in (2013) 20 International Journal of
Cultural Property 460–​465������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 402n.446

Germany
Constitutional Court for the State of Baden-​Württemberg, Nama Traditional
Leaders Association, Order, 1 VB 14/​19, 21 February 2019 ������������� 453n.323, 453n.328

Ireland
Supreme Court, Webb v Ireland, 1 January 1988, [1988] I.R. 353������������������������������� 458n.358

Italy
Council of State (Consiglio di Stato), Case No. 3154, Associazione nazionale
Italia Nostra Onlus c. Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali et al.,
23 June 2008 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 229n.312, 229n.314
Regional Administrative Tribunal of Lazio, Associazione Nazionale Italia Nostra
Onlus v Ministero per i Beni le Attività Culturali et al., No. 3518, 28 February
2007 in (2007) 17 Italian Yearbook of International Law 277–​280.������������������� 374n.213

Namibia
High Court of Namibia, Bernadus Swartbooi v The Speaker of the National Assembly,
Case No. HC-​MD-​CIV-​MOT-​REV-​2023/​00023, Founding Affidavit,
20 January 2023 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 507n.197
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 224. Cormac’s Gloss., Ir. Ar. Socy., p. 94. The gloss adds ‘verbi
gratia, figura solis.’ Is it possible that this can refer to the cup-
markings on stones and rocks?
225. O’Curry’s Lectures on MS. Materials, App. p. 527.
226. Chronicle of the Picts and Scots, p. 31.
227. Chron. Picts and Scots, pp. 37, 41, 42.
228. Ib., p. 45.
229. Misc. Irish Arch. Socy., p. 12. Dr. Todd, in his notes to the
Irish Nennius, p. 144, translates Sreod by ‘sneezing;’ and the last
line he renders ‘nor on the noise of clapping of hands.’—Life of S.
Pat., p. 122.
230. Adamnan, B. ii. c. 34.
231. Leabhar Breac, Part i. p. 137; Part ii. p. 198. The old Irish
word for Druid is in the singular Drui; nom. plural, Druadh or Druada;
gen. plural, Druad. The modern form is Draoi, Draoite, Draoit.
232. Adamnan, B. i. c. 33.
233. Ib., B. ii. c. 33.
234. Adamnan, B. ii. c. 10.
235. Ib., B. ii. c. 35.
236. Adamnan, B. iii. c. 9.
237. Petrie, Ant. of Tara Hill, p. 123.
238. This Dr. John Stuart has most conclusively shown in the very
able papers in the appendix to his preface to the Sculptured Stones
of Scotland, vol. ii. It is to be regretted that these valuable essays
have not been given to the public in a more accessible shape.
239. Dr. Todd, in a note as to the meaning of the word Beltine,
says, ‘This word is supposed to signify “lucky fire,” or “the fire of the
god Bel” or Baal. The former signification is possible; the Celtic word
Bil is good or lucky; tene or tine, fire. The other etymology, although
more generally received, is untenable.—Petrie on Tara, p. 84. The
Irish pagans worshipped the heavenly bodies, hills, pillar stones,
wells, etc. There is no evidence of their having had any personal
gods, or any knowledge of the Phœnician Baal. This very erroneous
etymology of the word Beltine is, nevertheless, the source of all the
theories about the Irish Baal-worship, etc.’—Life of Saint Patrick, p.
414.
 240. Dr. John Hill Burton was the first to expose the utterly
fictitious basis on which the popular conceptions of the so-called
Druidical religion rests, and he has done it with much ability and
acuteness in an article in the Edinburgh Review for July 1863, and in
his History of Scotland, vol. i. chap. iv. But he undoubtedly carries his
scepticism too far when he seems disposed to deny the existence
among the pre-Christian inhabitants of Scotland and Ireland of a
class of persons termed Druids. Here he must find himself face to
face with a body of evidence which it is impossible, with any truth or
candour, to ignore.
241. Adamnan, B. iii. c. 15.
242. Ib., B. i. c. 27.
243. Adamnan, B. ii. c. 43.
244. Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 67.
245. Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 83.
246. This account of Aidan’s consecration is contained in the older
Life by Cummine, and repeated by Adamnan, B. iii. c. 6. In Smith’s
Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, the author of the article
Coronation says,—‘Aidan was made king by him on the celebrated
Stone of Destiny, taken afterwards from Iona to Dunstaffnage, and
thence to Scone,’ and refers to Adamnan; but there is not a syllable
about the stone in Adamnan. For its removal from Iona to
Dunstaffnage there is no authority whatever, and that from
Dunstaffnage to Scone is part of the exploded fable originated by
Hector Boece. The subject is fully discussed in the author’s tract on
the ‘Coronation Stone.’
247. 575 Magna mordail, .i. conventio Drommacheta, in qua erant
Colum Cille ocus Mac Ainmireach.—An. Ult. It is three times referred
to by Adamnan, B. i. c. 38; B. ii. c. 6. He calls it ‘condictus regum.’
248. These lines are quoted in the old Irish Life as giving the
retinue with which Columba went to Iona; but Dallan Forgaill’s poem
relates to the convention of Drumceatt.
249. Amra Columcille by J. O’Beirne Crowe, pp. 9, 11, 15. The
same account is given in the Advocates’ Library MS. of the old Irish
Life, evidently taken from the Amra. The other tradition referred to
seems to be that in Adamnan. See B. i. c. 8, where this incident is
mentioned.
250. Amra Columcille, p. 15.
251. Ib., p. 13.
 CHAPTER IV.

THE FAMILY OF IONA.

What St. Columba Twelve years had now elapsed since Columba
had accomplished first set foot on the island of Iona, and he had
in twelve years; already to a great extent accomplished the task
and meaning of
he had set before him. He had founded his
the expression
“Family of Iona.” monastery in the island, as the central point of his
mission; and the exhibition of the Christian life, as
alone it was possible to present it in the state of society which
prevailed among these pagan tribes, as a colony of tonsured monks
following a monastic rule, had its usual effect in influencing the
population of the adjacent districts. He had converted and baptized
the most powerful monarch that ever occupied the Pictish throne,
and secured his friendship and support; and this was soon followed
by the whole nation ostensibly professing the Christian faith. He had
succeeded in re-establishing the Irish colony of Dalriada in the full
possession of its territories, and obtained from the Ardri, or supreme
king of Ireland, the recognition of its independence. He now found
himself occupying a position of great influence and authority both in
Ireland and Scotland—as the founder of numerous monasteries in
the former, and as the acknowledged head of the Christian Church in
the latter. Adamnan tells us that he had founded monasteries within
the territories both of the Picts and of the Scots of Britain, who are
separated from each other by the great mountain range of
Drumalban.[252] These monasteries, as well as those which he had
founded in Ireland, regarded the insular monastery of Iona as the
mother church, and as having, as such, a claim to their obedience;
and became subject to her jurisdiction, while their inmates
constituted the great monastic fraternity which was termed the
Muintir Iae, or family of Iona, in the extended sense of the term.
Adamnan mentions only a few of these monasteries, and gives no
details which might enable us to fix the exact date of their
foundation; though we can gather from his narrative that some of
them existed during the earlier years of his mission, and all must, of
course, have been founded at some period during the thirty-four
years of his life in Iona.
Monasteries Among the islands in which he founded
founded in the monasteries, the two most important are those
islands. termed by Adamnan ‘Ethica terra’ and ‘Insula
Hinba,’ or ‘Hinbina:’ the former has been conclusively identified with
the low-lying and fertile island of Tiree, the Tireth, or ‘land of corn,’
which lies about twenty miles to the north-west of Iona, and whose
dim outline would be barely seen on the horizon were it not for the
elevated promontory of Ceannavara at the south end of the island.
The name Hinba or Hinbina seems to designate the group of islands
called the Garveloch Isles, situated in the centre of the great channel
which separates the island of Mull from the mainland of Lorn, and
which were the Imbach, or ‘sea-surrounded.’ The most westerly of
the four islands which constitute this group is termed Elachnave and
Eilean na Naomh, or the Island of Saints. It is a grassy island rising
to a considerable height, and has at the west side a small and
sheltered bay, on the lower ground facing which are a fountain,
called St. Columcille’s Well, and the foundations of what must have
been a monastic establishment, near which are the remains of two
beehive cells.[253] It is probable that on these two islands were
founded the two earliest monasteries by Brendan before they were
lost to the Scots of Dalriada by the defeat of the year 560, by which
event they were probably swept away. In the year 565 Comgall of
Bangor, who had come to the assistance of Columba on his first visit
to King Brude, erected a monastery at a certain village in the land of
Heth, or Tiree, where he is said in his Life to have abode some time;
and that too was ruined by the Picts. We are told in his Life that, ‘one
day when Comgall was working in the field, he put his white hood
over his garment; and about the same time a number of heathen
plunderers from the Picts came to that village to carry away
everything that was there, whether man or beast. Accordingly when
the heathen robbers came to Comgall, who was labouring in the
field, and saw his white hood over his cape, thinking that this white
hood was Comgall’s Deity, they were deterred from laying hands on
him, for fear of his God. However, they carried off to their ship the
brethren of Comgall and all their substance.’ The pirates are of
course shipwrecked through the prayers of the Saint, and gave back
their plunder; but afterwards Comgall was conducted back to Ireland
by a company of holy men.[254] This took place during the interval of
fourteen years between the defeat of the Dalriads in 560 and their
re-establishment in 574; and during this period the islands around
Iona, which had been occupied by the Scots and from which they
were driven by the Picts, seem to have formed a sort of debateable
ground with a mixed population of Scots and Picts, who carried on a
kind of guerilla warfare with each other; and any Christian
establishments which existed among them would form points of
attack for the heathen Picts. Thus we have here Pictish sea-robbers
attacking the monastery in Tiree; and Adamnan tells us of a noted
pirate of the royal tribe of Gabhran, and therefore a Scot, called
Johan, son of Conall, whose seat appears to have been the rude fort
which gave the name of Dunchonell to one of the Garvelochs, and
whom we find plundering in the district of Ardnamurchan.[255] He also
tells us of a robber, Erc, the Druid’s son, who resided in Colonsay,
and who plunders in the island of Mull.
Of Columban monasteries in Tiree, Adamnan mentions two. One
he calls ‘Campus Lunge,’ or the plain of Lunge. It was situated near
the shore over-against Iona, and had a portus, or harbour, which is
probably the little creek or bay still known as Portnaluing; and the
site of the monastery has been identified with that of Soroby on the
south-east side of the island, where a large churchyard with some
old tombstones and an ancient cross are the only remains of an
ecclesiastical establishment. The monastery is frequently mentioned
by Adamnan. It seems to have been founded at an early period, and
was under the charge of Baithen, afterwards the successor of
Columba in the abbacy of Iona.[256] The second is termed by
Adamnan Artchain, and said to have been founded by Findchan, one
of Columba’s monks, whose name also appears in Kilfinichen in the
island of Mull.[257] The island, too, which he calls Hinba, is repeatedly
mentioned by Adamnan, and seems also to have been an early
foundation. He tells us that at one time Columba sent Ernan, his
uncle, an aged priest, to preside over the monastery he had founded
many years before in that island;[258] and it seems to have been
especially connected with the penitential discipline of the order, and
a place of retirement for those who wished to lead a more solitary
life. Thus, we find Columba on one occasion visiting Hinba, and
ordering that the penitents should enjoy some indulgence in respect
of food, which one of the penitents in that place, a certain Neman,
refused to accept.[259] Again, one of the brethren, Virgnous, after
having lived for some time in the monastery of Iona, resolved to
spend the rest of his life in Hinba, and led the life of an anchorite for
twelve years in the hermitage of Muirbulcmar.[260] The church and the
house occupied by Columba are mentioned by Adamnan, and it is
not impossible that the hermitage here referred to yet exists in one of
the two beehive cells, which is still entire.[261] Here, too, he tells us
that four holy founders of monasteries came from Ireland to visit
Columba, whom they found in Hinba. These were Comgall of Bangor
and Cainnech of Achaboe, the two who had accompanied him in his
first visit to King Brude, Brendan of Clonfert, and that Cormac for
whom, when on a voyage in search of a solitary island in which to
found a hermitage, he asked King Brude to secure the protection of
the ruler of the Orkneys. This meeting must have taken place before
the year 577, when Brendan died. They are termed by Adamnan
‘founders of monasteries,’ and he probably means here monasteries
in Scotland; for Cormac is not known to have founded any
monastery in Ireland, where he was superior of the monastery of
Durrow, founded by Columba shortly before he began his mission in
Iona; but in Galloway the church of Kirkcormac probably takes its
name from him. The other three had all founded monasteries in
Scotland—Brendan one in Tiree, and another probably in the island
belonging to the Garveloch group, called Culbrandon; Comgall, in
Tiree; while Cainnech founded several monasteries in Scotland. In
his Life he is said to have lived in Heth, or Tiree, where the remains
of a church called Cillchainnech still exist. He was also in Iona,
where the remains of a burying-ground are still called Cillchainnech.
He is also said to have dwelt at the foot of a mountain in the
Drumalban range, referring, no doubt, to the church of
Laggankenney, at the east end of Loch Laggan, and two islands are
mentioned, Ibdone and Eninis, or the ‘island of birds,’ one or other of
which was probably the island now called Inchkenneth, on the west
side of Mull.[262] Adamnan mentions one other island monastery, that
of Elena, of which one of Columba’s twelve followers, Lugneus
Mocumin, became superior—probably Eilean Naomh on the west
coast of Isla; and two monasteries on the mainland, one called Cella
Diuni, of which Cailtan was superior, on the lake of the river Aba,
which is probably Lochawe; and the other called Kailleauinde, of
which Finten was superior, and which may be Killundine in the old
parish of Killintag in Morvern.[263] A few of Columba’s other
foundations in western districts and islands can be traced by their
dedications to him. In the island of Skye, where he is mentioned by
Adamnan as having been twice, in the very remarkable ruins on an
island in a loch now drained, called Loch Chollumcille, in the north of
Skye. Also, on an island in the river of Snizort, one which was of old
called Sanct Colme’s kirk in Snizort; and one on a small island in the
bay of Portree, called Eilean Columcille.[264] The church in Canna too
bore his name. In Morvern one of the two old parishes was called
Cillcholumchille, and within the limits of Dalriada, on the mainland,
were a few churches bearing the same name.
Monasteries Of churches founded during his life, and no
founded during St. doubt in connection with him by others, three
Columba’s life by were sufficiently prominent to be occasionally
others in the
mentioned in the Irish Annals. The first was that
islands.
of Lismore, founded on the long grassy island of
Lismore, lying between the coast of Lorn and that of Morvern, by
Lugadius, or Moluoc, a bishop. He is termed by Angus the Culdee,
under June 25th, ‘Lamluoc the pure, the bright, the pleasant, the sun
of Lismore;’ and the gloss adds, ‘that is, Moluoc of Lismore in Alban.’
His death is recorded by Tighernac in 592.[265] He is said by the
Breviary of Aberdeen to have been a disciple of Brendan; but it is
more probable that he was attached to Columba, as his pedigree
takes him up to Conall Gulban, the ancestor of Columba and the
founder of the tribe to which he belonged.[266] The name of Kilmaluog
in Lismore still commemorates his church there. The second of these
monasteries is that of Cinngaradh, or Kingarth, a church in the south
end of the island of Bute, which was founded by Cathan, who also
was a bishop. He was of the race of the Irish Picts, and the
contemporary and friend of Comgall and Cainnech;[267] and from him
were named the churches termed Cillchattan. The third was founded
in the island of Egea, or Egg, which, with its strangely-shaped hill
called the Scuir of Egg, can be seen from the north end of Iona. The
founder was Donnan. He is commemorated by Angus the Culdee in
his Felire, on the 17th of April, as ‘Donnan of cold Eig,’ to which the
gloss adds, ‘Eig is the name of an island which is in Alban, and in it
is Donnan. This Donnan went to Columcille to make him his
Anmchara, or soul-friend; upon which Columcille said to him, I shall
not be soul-friend to a company of red martyrdom, for thou shalt
come to red martyrdom and thy people with thee; and it was so
fulfilled;’[268] and in his Litany he invokes the ‘fifty-four who suffered
martyrdom with Donnan of Ega.’[269] This would place the settlement
in the island of Egg in the lifetime of Columba, and probably during
the interval between the defeat and death of Gabran in 560 and the
succession of Aidan in 574, when it required no great gift of
prophecy to anticipate such a fate for a Christian establishment in
one of the group of islands which were at the time the scene of
warfare between the two nations, though this fate did not in fact
overtake them till some time after. The churches termed Cill Donnan
were either founded by him or dedicated to him. The numerous
churches in the west Highlands bearing the names of Cillmaluag,
Cillchattan, and Cilldonnan show that these were centres of
missionary work.
Monasteries Of the monasteries which must have been
founded by founded by Columba in the Pictish territories east
Columba and of the Drumalban range Adamnan gives us no
other among the
account, nor does he even mention any by name;
northern Picts.
but of the foundation of one we have an
instructive account in the Book of Deer, which shows that they
extended as far as the Eastern Sea. The tradition of the foundation
of the churches of Aberdour in Banffshire and of Deer in the district
of Buchan are thus given. ‘Columcille and Drostan, son of Cosgrach,
his pupil, came from Hi, or Iona, as God had shown to them, unto
Abbordoboir, or Aberdour, and Bede the Cruithnech, or Pict, was
Mormaer of Buchan before them; and it was he that gave them that
cathair, or town, in freedom for ever from Mormaer and Toisech.
They came after that to the other town; and it was pleasing to
Columcille, because it was full of God’s grace, and he asked of the
Mormaer—viz., Bede—that he should give it him, and he did not give
it; and a son of his took an illness after refusing the clerics, and he
was nearly dead. Then the Mormaer went to entreat the clerics that
they should make prayer for the son, that health should come to him,
and he gave in offering to them from Cloch in tiprat to Cloch pette
mic Garnait. They made the prayer, and health came to him. Then
Columcille gave to Drostan that cathair, and blessed it, and left as
his word “Whosoever should come against it, let him not be many-
yeared victorious.” Drostan’s tears came on parting with Columcille.
Said Columcille, “Let Dear be its name henceforward.”’[270] In this
traditional account preserved by the monks of Deer, we have a type
of the mode in which these monasteries, or Christian colonies, were
settled among the heathen tribes—the grant of a cathair, or fort, by
the head of the tribe, and its occupation by a colony of clerics,—
which is quite in accordance with what we learn as to the settlements
of this monastic church in Ireland. The church of Rosmarkyn, now
Rosemarky, on the northern shore of the Moray Firth, and that of
Muirthillauch, or Mortlach, in the vale of the Fiddich, were dedicated
to Moluog of Lismore, and were probably founded by him, as was
that of Kildonan in Sutherland, by Donnan.
A.D. 584-597. In 584 an event happened which appears to
Monasteries have opened up an additional field for Columba’s
founded by missionary labour. This was the death of his
Columba among
steady friend and supporter King Brude, who died
the southern Picts.
in that year.[271] Adamnan seems to be at a loss to
account for death having been allowed to overtake King Brude while
the powerful intercession of the great saint might have been
exercised on his behalf, and attributes it to the disappearance of a
mysterious crystal which Columba had blessed, and which, when
dipped in water, was believed to impart to it a curative virtue. It was
preserved among the king’s treasures, but could not be found,
though sought for in the place where it was kept on the day when
King Brude died in his palace near the river Ness.[272] His successor
was Gartnaidh, son of Domelch, who belonged to the nation of the
southern Picts, and appears to have had his royal seat at Abernethy,
on the southern bank of the Tay, near its junction with the river Earn.
The only fact recorded of his reign is that he built the church of
Abernethy two hundred and twenty-five years and eleven months
before the church of Dunkeld was built by King Constantin.[273] The
statement is so specific, that it seems to embody a fragment of real
history contained in some early chronicle, and places the date of the
foundation of Abernethy during the first ten years of Gartnaidh’s
reign. The nation of the southern Picts had, as we have seen, been
converted early in the previous century by Ninian; and the Pictish
Chronicle attributes the foundation of the church of Abernethy to an
early King Nectan, who reigned from 457 to 481; but the Christianity
established among them had no permanence, and they gradually fell
off, till hardly even the semblance of a Christian church remained.
What King Gartnaidh did, therefore, was to found a new monastic
church where the earlier church had been, which, like it, was
dedicated to St. Bridget of Kildare, and this not only took place
during Columba’s life, but is, in the ancient tract called the Amra
Columcille, directly attributed to his preaching, for in alluding to his
death it contains this line: ‘For the teacher is not, who used to teach
the tuatha, or tribes, of Toi;’ and the gloss upon it is, ‘The teacher
who used to teach the tribes who were around Tai. It is the name of a
river in Alban;’ and again, ‘He subdued the mouths of the fierce who
were at Toi with the will of the king,’ which is thus glossed: ‘He
subdued the mouths of the fierce with the Ardrig, or supreme king of
Toi; though it was what they wished—to say evil, so it is a blessing
they used to make, ut fuit Balam.’[274] Gartnaidh is here called the
supreme king of Toi, or of the Tay, and the people whom Columba
taught, the tribes about the Tay, which leaves little doubt that the
church of Abernethy on the banks of the Tay, at this time the chief
seat of government, had been refounded in connection with his
mission to the southern Picts. In this work Columba had also the
assistance of his friend Cainnech, whose Pictish descent would
render his aid more effective. Cainnech appears to have founded a
monastery in the east end of the province of Fife, not far from where
the river Eden pours its waters into the German Ocean at a place
called Rig-Monadh, or the royal mount, which afterwards became
celebrated as the site on which the church of St. Andrews was
founded, and as giving to that church its Gaelic name of Kilrimont. In
the notice of Cainnech on 11th October in the Martyrology of Angus
the Culdee, the following gloss is added: ‘And Achadh-bo is his
principal church, and he has a Recles, or monastery, at Cill Rig-
monaig in Alban. Once upon a time, when Cainnech went to visit
Finnin, he asked him for a place of residence. I see no place here
now, said Finnin, for others have taken all the places up before thee.
May there be a desert place there, said Cainnech, that is, in
Alban;’[275] and this seems to be alluded to in the Life of Cainnech
when it is said, ‘Afterwards the Irish saints sent messengers to
Cainnech, having learnt that he was living as a hermit in Britain; and
Cainnech was then brought from his hermitage against his will.’[276]
The churches dedicated to Moluog, to Drostan, to Machut the pupil
of Brendan, and to Cathan, and the church founded at Dunblane by
Blaan of Cinngaradh, the son of King Aidan and nephew of Cathan,
[277]
show the spread of the Columban Church in the territory of the
southern Picts.
Visit of Saint In the latter years of his life we find Columba
Columba to residing for a few months in the midland part of
Ireland. Ireland, and visiting the brethren who dwelt in the
celebrated monastery of Clonmacnois. His reception there shows the
estimation in which he was now held. ‘As soon as it was known that
he was near, all flocked from their little grange farms near the
monastery, and, along with those who were within it, ranged
themselves with enthusiasm under the Abbot Alither; then,
advancing beyond the enclosure of the monastery, they went out as
one man to meet Columba, as if he were an angel of the Lord;
humbly bowing down, with their faces to the ground, in his presence,
they kissed him most reverently, and, singing hymns of praise as
they went, they conducted him with all honour to the church. Over
the saint, as he walked, a canopy made of wood was supported by
four men walking by his side, lest the holy abbot Columba should be
troubled by the crowd of brethren pressing upon him.’[278] In 593
Columba completed thirty years of his missionary work in Britain,
and this seems to have given him a foreboding of his coming end;[279]
but he survived four years longer, and then his thirty-four years’
pilgrimage in Britain was brought to its close with his life.
Last day of his life.
 The touching narrative which both his biographers, Cummene and
Adamnan, give of his last days has been often quoted; but it
presents such a charming picture of what his life in the island was,
that it may well be repeated here. In the year 597 Columba had
reached his seventy-seventh year, and towards the end of May in
that year, says Cummene, the man of God, worn with age and
carried in a car, goes to visit the working brethren, who were, adds
Adamnan, then at work on the western side of the island, and
addresses them, saying, ‘During the Paschal solemnities in the
month of April just past I could have desired to depart to Christ, but
lest a joyous festival should be turned for you into mourning my
departure has been deferred,’ Hearing these words, the brethren, or,
as Adamnan calls them, the beloved monks, were greatly afflicted.
The man of God, however, as he sat in his car, turned his face
towards the east and blessed the island with its insular inhabitants.
After the words of blessing, the saint was carried back to his
monastery. On Sunday the second of June we find him celebrating
the solemn offices of the eucharist, when, as his eyes were raised to
heaven, the brethren observed a sudden expression of rapture on
his face, which he explained to them was caused by his seeming to
see an angel of the Lord looking down upon them within the church
and blessing it, and who, he believed, had been sent on account of
the death of some one dear to God, or, as Adamnan expresses it, ‘to
demand a deposit dear to God, by which he understood was meant
his own soul, as a deposit intrusted to him by God.’
Columba seems to have had a presentiment that the following
Saturday would be his last day on earth, for, having called his
attendant Diormet, he solemnly addressed him—‘This day is called
in the sacred Scriptures the Sabbath, a day of rest; and truly to me
this day will be a day of rest, for it is the last of my life, and in it I shall
enter into my rest after the fatigues of my labours; and this night
preceding Sunday I shall go the way of my fathers, for Christ already
calls me, and thus it is revealed to me.’ These words saddened his
attendant, but the father consoled him. Such is Cummene’s short
narrative. Adamnan, who amplifies it, states that Columba had gone
with his attendant Diormet to bless the nearest barn, which was
probably situated close to the mill and not far from the present ruins.
When the saint entered it, he blessed it and two heaps of winnowed
corn that were in it, and gave thanks in these words, saying, ‘I
heartily congratulate my beloved monks that this year also, if I am
obliged to depart from you, you will have a sufficient supply for the
year.’ According to Adamnan, it was in answer to a remark which this
called forth from his attendant that he made the revelation to him,
which he made him promise on his bended knees that he would not
reveal to any one before his death. Adamnan then introduces after it
the incident that Columba, in going back to the monastery from the
barn, rested half-way at a place where a cross which was afterwards
erected, and was standing to his day fixed into a millstone, might be
observed at the side of the road; and there came to him a white
pack-horse, the same that used, as a willing servant, to carry the
milk vessels from the cowshed to the monastery. It came up to the
saint, and, strange to say, laid its head on his bosom and began to
utter plaintive cries and, like a human being, to shed copious tears
on the saint’s bosom, foaming and greatly wailing. The attendant,
seeing this, began to drive the weeping mourner away; but the saint
forbade him, saying, ‘Let it alone, as it is so fond of me—let it pour
out its bitter grief into my bosom. Lo! thou, as thou art a man and
hast a rational soul, canst know nothing of my departure hence,
except what I myself have just told you, but to this brute beast devoid
of reason the Creator himself hath evidently in some way made it
known that its master is going to leave it;’ and saying this the saint
blessed the work-horse, which turned away from him in sadness.
According to both Cummene and Adamnan, he then went out,
and, ascending the hillock which overhangs the monastery,[280] he
stood for some little time on its summit, and, uplifting his hands, he
blessed his monastery; and, looking at its present position and future
prospects, he uttered a prophecy, the terms of which Adamnan alone
adds: ‘Small and mean though this place is, yet it shall be held in
great and unusual honour, not only by the kings of the Scots with
their people, but also by the rulers of foreign and barbarous nations
and by their subjects; the saints also of other churches even shall
regard it with no common reverence.’ After this, both biographers tell
us, descending from the hill and returning to the monastery, he sat in
his cell and transcribed the Psalter. When he came to that verse of
the thirty-third Psalm (the thirty-fourth of our version) where it is
written, ‘They that seek the Lord shall want no manner of thing that is
good.’—‘Here,’ he said, ‘I think I can write no more: let Baithen write
what follows.’ Having thus written the verse at the end of the page,
he entered the holy church in order to celebrate the nocturnal vigils
of the Lord’s Day; and, as soon as they were over, he returned to his
cell and spent the rest of the night on his bed, where he had for his
couch the bare ground, or, as Adamnan says, a bare flag, and for his
pillow a stone. While reclining there, he commended his last words
to his sons, or, as Adamnan says, to the brethren. ‘Have peace
always and unfeigned charity among yourselves. The Lord, the
Comforter of the good, will be your helper; and I, abiding with Him,
will intercede for you that He may provide for you good things both
temporal and eternal.’ Having said these words, St. Columba
became silent. Then, as soon as the bell rang at midnight, rising
hastily, he went to the church, and, running more quickly than the
rest, he entered alone and knelt down in prayer beside the altar.
Diormet, his attendant, however, following more slowly, saw from a
distance the whole interior of the church filled at the same moment
with a heavenly light; but, when he drew near to the door, the same
light, which had also been seen by some of the brethren, quickly
disappeared. Diormet, however, entering the church, cried out in a
mournful voice, ‘Where art thou, father?’ and, feeling his way in the
darkness, the lights not having yet been brought in by the brethren,
he found the saint lying before the altar; and raising him up a little,
and sitting down beside him, he laid his holy head on his bosom.
Meantime the rest of the brethren ran in, and, beholding their father
dying, whom living they so loved, they burst into lamentations. The
saint, however, his soul having not yet departed, opened wide his
eyes and looked around him from side to side as if seeing the holy
angels coming to meet him. Diormet then, raising his right hand,
urged him to bless the brethren; but the holy father himself moved
his hand at the same time as well as he was able, and, having thus
signified to them his holy benediction, he immediately breathed his
last. His face still remained ruddy and brightened in a wonderful way
from the heavenly vision: so that he had the appearance not so
much of one dead as of one that sleepeth.’[281]
 ‘In the meantime,’ as both biographers inform us, ‘after the
departure of his saintly soul, the matin hymns being finished, his
sacred body was carried, the brethren chanting psalms, from the
church to his cell, where his obsequies were celebrated with all due
honour for three days and as many nights; and when these praises
of God were finished, his holy body, wrapped in fine clean linen
cloths’ and, Adamnan adds, placed in a coffin, or tomb,[282] prepared
for it, was buried with all due veneration. The stone which St.
Columba had used as a pillow was placed, as a kind of monument,
at his grave, where it still stood in Adamnan’s day. His obsequies,
which lasted three days and nights, were confined to the inhabitants
of the island alone; for there arose a storm of wind without rain,
which blew so violently during the whole time that no one could cross
the sound in his boat;[283] but immediately after the interment the
wind ceased and the storm was quelled, so that the whole sea
became calm.
Character of St. Columba died on Sunday morning the 9th of
Columba. June in the year 597,[284] and left behind him an
imperishable memory in the affections and veneration of the people
whom he first brought over to the Christian faith. It is unfortunately
the fate of all such men who stand out prominently from among their
fellows and put their stamp upon the age in which they lived, that, as
the true character of their sayings and doings fades from men’s
minds, they become more and more the subject of spurious
traditions, and the popular mind invests them with attributes to which
they have no claim. When these loose popular traditions and
conceptions are collected and become imbedded in a systematic
biography, the evil becomes irreparable, and it is no longer possible
to separate in popular estimation the true from the spurious. This has
been peculiarly the case with Columba, and has led to a very false
estimate of his character. It has been thus drawn by a great writer, in
language at least of much eloquence:—‘He was vindictive,
passionate, bold, a man of strife, born a soldier rather than a monk,
and known, praised and blamed as a soldier—so that even in his
lifetime he was invoked in fight; and continued a soldier, insulanus
miles, even upon the island rock from which he rushed forth to
preach, convert, enlighten, reconcile and reprimand both princes and
nations, men and women, laymen and clerks. He was at the same
time full of contradictions and contrasts—at once tender and irritable,
rude and courteous, ironical and compassionate, caressing and
imperious, grateful and revengeful—led by pity as well as by wrath,
ever moved by generous passions, and among all passions fired to
the very end of his life by two which his countrymen understand the
best, the love of poetry and the love of country. Little inclined to
melancholy when he had once surmounted the great sorrow of his
life, which was his exile; little disposed, save towards the end, to
contemplation or solitude, but trained by prayer and austerities to
triumphs of evangelical exposition; despising rest, untiring in mental
and manual toil, born for eloquence, and gifted with a voice so
penetrating and sonorous that it was thought of afterwards as one of
the most miraculous gifts that he had received of God; frank and
loyal, original and powerful in his words as in his actions—in cloister
and mission and parliament, on land and on sea, in Ireland as in
Scotland, always swayed by the love of God and of his neighbour,
whom it was his will and pleasure to serve with an impassioned
uprightness. Such was Columba.’[285] Or rather, such is the Columba
of popular tradition, described in the beautiful and forcible language
of his most eloquent biographer; but much of this character is based
upon very questionable statements, and, as the facts which appear
to sanction it do not stand the test of critical examination, so the
harder features of his character disappear in the earlier estimates of
it. Adamnan says of him, ‘From his boyhood he had been brought up
in Christian training, in the study of wisdom, and by the grace of God
had so preserved the integrity of his body and the purity of his soul,
that, though dwelling on earth, he appeared to live like the saints in
heaven. For he was angelic in appearance, graceful in speech, holy
in work, with talents of the highest order and consummate prudence;
he lived during thirty-four years an island soldier. He never could
spend the space even of one hour without study, or prayer, or
writing, or some other holy occupation. So incessantly was he
engaged night and day in the unwearied exercise of fasting and
watching, that the burden of each of these austerities would seem
beyond the power of all human endurance. And still, in all these, he
was beloved by all; for a holy joy ever beaming on his face revealed
the joy and gladness with which the Holy Spirit filled his inmost
soul.’[286]
Dallan Forgaill, in the ancient tract called the Amra Choluimchille,
speaks of him in the same strain. He describes his people mourning
him who was ‘their souls’ light, their learned one—their chief from
right—who was God’s messenger—who dispelled fears from them—
who used to explain the truth of words—a harp without a base chord;
—a perfect sage who believed Christ—he was learned, he was
chaste—he was charitable—he was an abounding benefit of guests
—he was eager—he was noble—he was gentle—he was the
physician of the heart of every sage—he was to persons inscrutable
—he was a shelter to the naked—he was a consolation to the poor;
—there went not from the world one who was more continual for the
remembrance of the cross.’[287] There is no trace here of those darker
features of vindictiveness, love of fighting, and the remorse caused
by its indulgence; nor do the events of his life, as we find them rather
hinted at than narrated, bear out such an estimate of it. He was
evidently a man of great force of character and determined zeal in
effecting his purpose—one of those master-minds which influence
and sway others by the mere force of contact; but he could not have
been the object of such tender love and implicit devotion from all
who came under the sphere of his influence, if the softer and more
amiable features pictured in these earlier descriptions of him had not
predominated in his character.
Three peculiarities he had, which led afterwards to a belief in his
miraculous powers. One was his sonorous voice. Dallan Forgaill tells
us

The sound of his voice, Columcille’s,

Great its sweetness above every company;
To the end of fifteen hundred paces—
Vast courses—it was clear.[288]

Adamnan includes this among his miraculous gifts, and adds that to
those who were with him in the church his voice did not seem louder
than that of others; and yet, at the same time, persons more than a
mile away heard it so distinctly that they could mark each syllable of
the verses he was singing, for his voice sounded the same whether
far or near! He gives us another instance of it. Columba was
chanting the evening hymns with a few of his brethren, as usual,
near King Brude’s fortress, and outside the king’s fortifications, when
some ‘Magi,’ coming near to them, did all they could to prevent
God’s praises being sung in the midst of a pagan nation. On seeing
this, the saint began to sing the 44th Psalm; and, at the same
moment, so wonderfully loud, like pealing thunder, did his voice
become, that king and people were struck with terror and
amazement.[289] Another trait, which was ascribed to prophetic power,
was his remarkable observation of natural objects and skill in
interpreting the signs of the weather in these western regions. Dallan
Forgaill says: ‘Seasons and storms he perceived, that is, he used to
understand when calm and storm would come—he harmonised the
moon’s cocircle in regard to course—he perceived its race with the
branching sun—and sea course, that is, he was skilful in the course
of the sea—he would count the stars of heaven.’[290] When Adamnan
tells us that Baithene and Columban asked him to obtain from the
Lord a favourable wind on the next day, though they were to sail in
different directions, and how he promised a south wind to Baithene
next morning till he reached Tiree, and told Columban to set out for
Ireland at the third hour of the same day, ‘for the Lord will soon
change the wind to the north,’[291] it required no more than great skill
in interpreting natural signs to foretell a south wind in the morning
and the return breeze three hours after. The third quality was a
remarkable sagacity in forecasting probable events, and a keen
insight into character and motives. How tales handed down of the
exercise of such qualities should by degrees come to be held as
proofs of miraculous and prophetic power, it is not difficult to
understand.
Primacy of Iona After Columba’s death, the monastery of Iona
and successors of appears to have been the acknowledged head of
St. Columba. all the monasteries and churches which his
mission had established in Scotland, as well as of those previously
founded by him in Ireland. To use the words of Bede, ‘This
monastery for a long time held the pre-eminence over most of those
of the northern Scots, and all those of the Picts, and had the
direction of their people,’[292] a position to which it was entitled, as the
mother church, from its possession of the body of the patron saint.
[293]
Of the subsequent abbots of Iona who succeeded Columba in
this position of pre-eminency, Bede tells us that, ‘whatever kind of
person he was himself, this we know of him for certain, that he left
successors distinguished for their great charity, divine love and strict
attention to their rules of discipline; following, indeed, uncertain
cycles in their computation of the great festival (of Easter), because,
far away as they were out of the world, no one had supplied them
with the synodal decrees relating to the Paschal observance; yet
withal diligently observing such works of piety and charity as they
could find in the Prophetic, Evangelic and Apostolic writings.’[294]
A.D. 597-599. According to the law which regulated the
Baithene, son of succession to the abbacy in these Irish
Brendan. monasteries, it fell to the tribe of the patron saint
to provide a successor; and Baithene, the cousin and confidential
friend and associate of Columba, and superior of his monastery of
Maigh Lunge in Tiree, who was also of the northern Hy Neill, and a
descendant of Conall Gulban, became his successor, ‘for,’ says the
Martyrology of Donegal, ‘it was from the men of Erin the abbot of I
was chosen, and he was most frequently chosen from the men of
Cinel Conaill.’ He appears to have been designated by Columba
himself as his successor, and to have been at once acknowledged
by the other Columban monasteries; for Adamnan tells us that
Finten, the son of Tailchen, had resolved to leave Ireland and go to
Columba in Iona. ‘Burning with that desire,’ says Adamnan, ‘he went
to an old friend, the most prudent and venerable cleric in his country,
who was called in the Scotic tongue Columb Crag, to get some
sound advice from him. When he had laid open his mind to him, he
received the following answer: “As thy devout wish is, I feel, inspired
by God, who can presume to say that thou shouldst not cross the
sea to Saint Columba?” At the same moment two monks of Columba
happened to arrive; and when they remarked about their journey,
they replied, “We have lately come across from Britain, and to-day
we have come from Daire Calgaich,” or Derry. “Is he well,” says
Columb Crag, “your holy father Columba?” Then they burst into
tears, and answered, with great sorrow, “Our patron is indeed well,